that had the cunning to await its right occasion, but of the relief of which, as a demonstration, she meanwhile felt no little need.  “You’ve such a dread of my possibly complaining to you that you keep pealing all the bells to drown my voice; but don’t cry out, my dear, till you’re hurt—­and above all ask yourself how I can be so wicked as to complain.  What in the name of all that’s fantastic can you dream that I have to complain of?” Such inquiries the Princess temporarily succeeded in repressing, and she did so, in a measure, by the aid of her wondering if this ambiguity with which her friend affected her wouldn’t be at present a good deal like the ambiguity with which she herself must frequently affect her father.  She wondered how she should enjoy, on his part, such a take-up as she but just succeeded, from day to day, in sparing Mrs. Assingham, and that made for her trying to be as easy with this associate as Mr. Verver, blessed man, all indulgent but all inscrutable, was with his daughter.  She had extracted from her, none the less, a vow in respect to the time that, if the Colonel might be depended on, they would spend at Fawns; and nothing came home to her more, in this connection, or inspired her with a more intimate interest, than her sense of absolutely seeing her interlocutress forbear to observe that Charlotte’s view of a long visit, even from such allies, was there to be reckoned with.

Fanny stood off from that proposition as visibly to the Princess, and as consciously to herself, as she might have backed away from the edge of a chasm into which she feared to slip; a truth that contributed again to keep before our young woman her own constant danger of advertising her subtle processes.  That Charlotte should have begun to be restrictive about the Assinghams—­which she had never, and for a hundred obviously good reasons, been before—­ this in itself was a fact of the highest value for Maggie, and of a value enhanced by the silence in which Fanny herself so much too unmistakably dressed it.  What gave it quite thrillingly its price was exactly the circumstance that it thus opposed her to her stepmother more actively—­if she was to back up her friends for holding out—­than she had ever yet been opposed; though of course with the involved result of the fine chance given Mrs. Verver to ask her husband for explanations.  Ah, from the moment she should be definitely caught in opposition there would be naturally no saying how much Charlotte’s opportunities might multiply!  What would become of her father, she hauntedly asked, if his wife, on the one side, should begin to press him to call his daughter to order, and the force of old habit—­to put it only at that—­should dispose him, not less effectively, to believe in this young person at any price?  There she was, all round, imprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should give—­certainly give him.  The house in the country was his